No I’m not in London, but good friends and great Bears fans are, and I hope they enjoy the game.

1. I’ve been enamored with Devin Hester lately, watching him continue to display the fact that he’s the best kick returner in NFL history. I’m so glad the Bears have something that is the best in NFL history on their team now, even if in the long run a return man has little impact on the season’s record. Just thinking-how great would it be for Hester to be able to say he ran one back on another continent? I don’t think it will happen though-I don’t think the Bucs will put the ball anywhere near him.

2. I don’t know what to think about this game. I never make predictions, but seems pretty evenly matched especially with Tampa having injuries at running back and defensive line. I hope the Bears’ travel plans with them currently walking around with jet lag don’t contribute to problems. A neighbor and good friend of mine is a Buccaneer fan and we’re looking forward to the first matchup between the teams since we met.

3. Earlier this week, Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune made a big deal about how Jay Cutler showed poor leadership for cursing Mike Matrz. Give him a break. Imagine what we would have heard Jim McMahon telling Mike Ditka had McMahon ever been miked? I thought the whole thing was hilarious, personally.

4. Profootballtalk even defends Cutler and points out the double-standard: other quarterbacks would be called “great leaders” if they did the same thing.

5. I keep appealing to our UK fans-please send me some pictures of the game and I’d love to use them on my sites!

6. With nothing better left to say, I’d like to chuckle at Rex Grossman. Three weeks ago Grossman was being hailed as the comeback kid, the Bears were wrong, etc. Then after two poor weeks culminating in a four-interception performance, Grossman has been benched for questionable journeyman John Beck. So much for that. I was thinking, could the Bears have directly led to the Green Bay Packers drafting Aaron Rodgers, who is in my opinion now the best quarterback in the NFL by a wide margin? In 2003, former Packer GM Ron Wolf publicly called Grossman “the closest thing to Brett Favre since Brett Favre. (Hold laughter please). Was it a smokescreen, or were the Packers interested in taking Grossman a few picks after the Bears took him? Obviously if Green Bay would have, things would be very different and they wouldn’t have taken Rodgers. Then again, maybe Grossman would have turned out to be Rodgers simply because he played for the Packers. We’ll never know.

One Response to “Chicago Bears Weekend Six Pack UK Style”

I am really worried about the fact that the Bears travelled over there so late in the week. I was completely shocked when I heard it, although I do understand the rationale behind it (I just hope it doesn’t blow up in their faces). The time difference, jet lag, fact that they are playing in a foreign country almost half way round the world – it may be too much of a system shock and distraction. We’ll see on Sunday…GO BEARS!